What does “ the science” say about Coronavirus 19 at the moment?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I thought most of the anti-vaxxers consider COVID-19 a hoax or think God is their anti-viral, so I don't know why they need drugs...

there seem to be different factions. Some think covid is horribly serious (that's not wrong, it is *fairly* serious) but have all sorts of conspiracies about vaccines not working etc.. So they are stockpiling Ivermectin etc.. They aren't coming out of the foxhole, and WWII never ended (if you get vaxxed and still take any precaution that might have 1% chance of working, vitamin D, vitamin X, gargle with salt water, out of an abundance of caution, well this doesn't really harm anyone).

But yea there seem a lot of people with pretty inconsistent positions or whose only position is to distrust any mainstream (or "liberal" - it's in the New York Times!) position on anything. And vaccines are political because, well because vaccines developed under the Trump administration are a Biden conspiracy or something, I don't know, vaccines are political umkay.

So a lot of people will argue vaccines don't work because there is an outbreak in vaccinated people here or there, and when you trace it down, it turns out none have serious infections, it's just somewhere where they were doing a lot of testing. You know these vaccines might meet a variant they can't handle, I'm just not really seeing it. I could be convinced though.

[iris lilies]

And then there are the deliberate hoaxes in”the science:”

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...ies-sokal-hoax

We talked about this sometime ago but I’d like to bring it up again because it’s so damn funny. It may not belong here exactly because any thinking person will understand there’s a difference between the hard sciences and the soft sciences of which gender sociological studies are the latter.

This Buzzfeed article summarizes how 3 academics set out to fool colleagues with completely ridiculous research papers and succeeded in getting many accepted for publication.

i found this comment from Sarah Richardson possibly even more ridiculous than the entire hoax.Lady, the hoaxer do not NEED a “control”. You Gatekeepers ushered them into the inner academic sanctum , you were supposed to be The Control.

“For all of the hoaxers’ emphasis on scientific rigor, their experiment doesn’t have a control,” said Sarah Richardson, a professor of the history of science and of studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University. “By their own standards, we can’t scientifically conclude anything from it.”

[ApatheticNoMore]

For many things there will Never Be a double blind study at least on a large scale, it's too huge an endeavor, that's why other types of studies are used.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Science, being a human endeavor, is almost by definition fraught with all the same frailties as any other: greed, ego, politics, etc. all come into play, which is why I'm wary of blindly following it.

pressure to publish, bias to publish results that show some correlation versus those that show none (negative results are just as valid scientifically as studies that show something), endless data mining of a study (that's part of what was done for the controversial Alzheimers drug that got approved, but data mining an experiment IS NOT AN EXPERIMENT, it's gone beyond the bounds of experimental science then), of course drug industry bias (they show more positives results than neutral parties) etc..

[catherine]

For many things there will Never Be a double blind study at least on a large scale, it's too huge an endeavor, that's why other types of studies are used.

There are tons of double-blind studies for most health/medical things--placebo-controlled studies are the bare minimum that a respected medical body would accept. Most of the studies are done and paid for by companies with a vested interest, but many are funded by non-profits or the government. These days when it comes to drugs the medical community usually clamors for head-to-head double-blind studies which ups the ante.

But you are right--in certain situations, double-blind studies are either impractical or too expensive. That's where the meta-analyses come in handy.

It really is far too early to come up with any clear-cut conclusions on COVID with any scientific rigor.

[pinkytoe]

Herbgeek's spouse and DH must be brothers. Even the hermit part. Yesterday, I mentioned possibly flying by myself since I am vaccinated and we still have credits; unvaxed DH started in with how some airlines aren't letting recently vaxed passengers fly due to potential blood clots. When he says these odd things, I sometimes do a fact check and see that they are either bogus or greatly exaggerated. It is hard living with the irrational thinking this has brought upon us. It makes me think less of him which is not a good way to feel about one's spouse.

[catherine]

On this topic, one of my former market-researcher-colleagues-turned-real-estate-professional posted this on Facebook.

evidence-based.jpg

[befree]

iris lilies, the article from "buzzfeed" (not at all what I would consider a reliable source, unlike Harvard, CDC, and other actual SCIENTIFIC sources) references b.s. papers submitted from people in the humanities field - gender studies would fall under psychology or sociology fields, not hard science. And even then, most of the reputable journals in the humanities field rejected these nonsense papers. That's why I say look at reputable sources - buzzfeed and most laypeople don't even begin to understand the concepts of validity, reliability, reproducibility, and other components of scientific method. Giving equal credence to science and not-science is comparing apples to oranges. If people think an article quoted on reddit is "scientific proof" no wonder they're confused. This leads to another, larger issue. Americans are not being taught critical thinking skills in order to evaluate what they read/hear. And they, like the rest of the world, need to develop special computer evaluation skills, in this age of Internet disinformation, deep fakes, and out and out lies.

[happystuff]

Herbgeek's spouse and DH must be brothers. Even the hermit part. Yesterday, I mentioned possibly flying by myself since I am vaccinated and we still have credits; unvaxed DH started in with how some airlines aren't letting recently vaxed passengers fly due to potential blood clots. When he says these odd things, I sometimes do a fact check and see that they are either bogus or greatly exaggerated. It is hard living with the irrational thinking this has brought upon us. It makes me think less of him which is not a good way to feel about one's spouse.

You are vaccinated, right? If so, when? I got my second vaccine shot mid-April and just flew home yesterday (after flight out a week ago).

[ApatheticNoMore]

Oh I am glad I don't have the white Republican male partner problem

All my life, finding a partner I could think with was important to me. To discuss how many angels really do fit on the head of a pin? Maybe, maybe. But there are times it actually matters in real reality, like reacting to a global pandemic for instance, life tends to throw curves, but not grade on them.

Only J&J even had blood clot issues right? So does pregnancy, likely at much higher rates. ACK, no women should get pregnant ever!!! (maybe that's a good idea but not for that reason ) So do birth control pills right? Ack no woman should prevent pregnancy ever!!!